


The Afterparty of the Apocalypse

by eighteenavenues



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Drunk!Bea, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 09:57:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4872475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eighteenavenues/pseuds/eighteenavenues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's drunk and sometimes it feels like the world is ending.</p><p>"“You’re not all bad, you know that?” she says, and then her arm drops to his neck and shoulders and she’s buried her face in the crook of his neck. “Also,” her voice is muffled, “you smell good.”"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Afterparty of the Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything in forever, but the image from the very end of this piece came to me very strongly when I was trying to sleep. So here we are. It's 3am, I wrote this in an hour, and nobody's beta-ed it at all.
> 
> This is timed for a few weeks after Hero's birthday party before Bea and Ben are officially Bea and Ben, but after shit's gone down.

She is drunk. She is falling down drunk and it’s sloppy and it’s fun and she’s giggling more than she has since she can last remember. But then she does remember, the last time she giggled this much was before Hero’s birthday party, and then she thinks of Hero’s birthday party and then she’s crying.

And god, she’s so drunk.

He finds her like this, a puddle of a girl gulping heaving breaths while pawing at her eyes to wipe away fast falling tears. She is on the landing between flights of stairs in an apartment building, somewhere outside a big party that his mates from football threw for god knows what reason.

He reaches towards her and then withdraws his hand. He thinks about bending down so that he can look her in the eye. He keeps hovering over her until she sputters and chokes and gives him a look that would be more frightening if she wasn’t splayed on the ground.

“If you’re going to laugh, just do it now,” she tells him, and the words have less bite than she wanted because her stomach’s just now started to revolt a bit, “quit staring and laugh about how the mighty Beatrice has fallen or how the Harpy’s lost her wings or whatever quip you’re going to go for.”

He decides to crouch. His knees creak as he settles downwards. He puts a hand on her shoulder, touching her with equal amounts uncertainty and purpose. “I’m not going to laugh.”

"You'd better not, Dickface.

He almost laughs. "Hey now, I didn't deserve that.

She looks at him contemplatively. "You always deserve that." 

He nods in agreement. And then shifts his hand so that his arm is around her waist, “I’m going to get you out of this stairwell and against a wall, okay? I think sitting much be more comfortable for you.”

She snorts. “You can’t pick me up.”

He tries, scooping his other arm under her legs like he’s seen in movies. He grunts. He sweats. She is right. He can’t. 

Her mouth opens and out tumbles out a laugh, it’s produced from some kind of reckless abandon and he thinks that maybe it’s a bit more frightening than her sobbing had been. 

“You tried but you can’t,” there are tears leaking out of her eyes at the corners, her chest aches from the force of the laughter, “you can’t pick me up. You tried, though.”

“We get it, I’m a weakling,” he tries to say it with a smile but it comes out sounding tired and thin. Her silence is fast and unexpected. She looks at him as if he’s revealed a secret.

“But you’re not,” she says, and her brow furrows with the seriousness of it all, “you’re the only one to stay with us. You’re the good one.”

He shrugs awkwardly, “thanks. But I’m still going to have to get you out of the stairs.”

Her indigent huff is his response, as she pulls herself up and, swaying, makes it somehow to standing. “Can we get food now?” she asks, and he doesn’t know when the two of them became a “we” and when no-holds-barred Bea started reaching for him when drunk instead of throwing curses his way.

“Aye aye,” he answers, “where do you want to go?”

She takes a step towards the descending steps, moving as if hypnotized. He wraps his arm around her waist again and she leans into him and giggles. “You weren’t strong enough last time.”

“Last time you were dead weight. This time you’re helping me out a little bit.”

She moves her hand to his face, exploring his cheekbones with her fingertips. Her breath smells like whisky and ghosts over him in the silence. He wishes he were drunk. He’s painfully sober, and he wishes he could be drunk enough to lose his inhibitions right now. Of course, he probably wouldn’t be here if he were drunk. Drunk Ben goes and sits in bathtubs, not stairwells. Drunk Ben wouldn’t have the advantage that sober Ben has in the form of Beatrice clinging to his arm and touching his lips with the pads of her fingers like they’re the first thing she’s ever felt.

“You’re not all bad, you know that?” she says, and then her arm drops to his neck and shoulders and she’s buried her face in the crook of his neck. “Also,” her voice is muffled, “you smell good.”

He wants to pull her impossibly closer and stay like that for hours. He wants to erase the smell of alcohol from her breath, or the current setting of the stairwell in the 2:00am dim light of the streetlamps. He wants to hold her for long enough that he can be sure she means this, that it’s not some drunken impulse.

She falls. Or rather, she starts slipping, but his arm is still around her middle and so he catches her.

“We should go.” He says, softly. Her head is hanging, her posture’s fallen like her body intended to, and he can keep her on her feet but he can’t push her chin back to its stubborn angle.

“Go where?” she asks.

“Food,” he tells her, “like you wanted.” 

She nods. She takes one step forward. She makes it all the way to the edge of the steps before abruptly sitting down and taking him, in his surprise, down with her. 

“I want things to go back to before.” She explains, gesturing at nothing in the chill night air. Her comment falls on the still night. Her hand falls to her lap and then moves, without her looking at it, towards him. She wraps her fingers around his wrist and then works them down his palm until they’re intertwined and he can’t breathe for a moment.

“Like before when you were crying on the landing? Because I don’t really want to leave you like that, you didn’t seem so happy or so safe. Not that I’m saying you’re unsafe or that you can’t take care of yourself, but I think you’re better off doing anything other than crying on a landing than you were when you were crying on the landing and—“

She withdraws her hand to gesture and he falls silent. “I don’t even know why I’m here and I never get drunk, never like this, but Hero’s so sad and I love her so I am sad too. Something was funny earlier but I can’t remember what it was and we were all really happy earlier but I can’t remember how.”

“Earlier Moffat wasn’t in charge of Doctor Who. Maybe that’s how.” Bea doesn’t laugh. He realizes the moment he says it that nothing he could say right now would make her laugh. “Let’s get food,” he says, gently. 

She nods. He thinks they should stand but they don’t.

“We’re gonna be okay, right?” she asks him, and the lights of the stairwell flicker and he doesn’t know what she means at all, but he nods and she falls forward and presses her cheek to his chest and they’re both filled with a quiet humming that could be the bugs around them, flinging themselves towards the blinking light, or could be something else entirely.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a review if you enjoyed the work! Also leave one if you didn't enjoy it so that I can improve for next time!


End file.
